Film Legacy Of Unification Church's Moon: One Of 1980s Worst Movie Bombs

The Rev Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church died of pneumonia Monday at a cult-owned Korean hospital near his home northwest of Seoul. He was 92. Hollywood will recall Moon’s ill-fated Hollywood motion picture Inchon, which commemorated Moon’s version of the Korean War’s 1950 Battle Of Inchon and starred Laurence Olivier as Gen Douglas MacArthur. The 1982 critically panned fiasco was mostly financed by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon — though he denied it at the time but received screen credit as the “Special Advisor on Korean Matters”. It did so poorly at the box office that it posted the largest financial loss of that year and was one of the biggest bombs of the 1980s. Robert Standard, associate producer of Inchon, was a member of the Unification Church of the United States. Moon had considered making films about the lives of Jesus or Elvis Presley. But in 1978, so the story goes, psychic Jeanne Dixon communicated with MacArthur’s spirit who endorsed Inchon as the film subject. She also reportedly chose James Bond film director Terence Young (Dr. No, Thunderball, From Russia with Love) as Inchon’s helmer. Not the best way to put together a winning formula for a film.